3 June 2024

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch puts artist Nathaniel Whittock into perspective.

The “N. Whittock” who produced the above scene of Oxford’s Procession of Boats was Nathaniel Whittock (1791 – 1860), an engraver most famous for his topographical bird’s-eye view of towns and cities. Born in London, by 1819 he was living in Oxford where he taught drawing and painting. Between 1824 and 1829 he is styled as a “Teacher of Drawing and Perspective and Lithographist to the University of Oxford.” He also worked for the University’s Ashmolean Museum and its scientific community. In 1830 he moved his engraving business to Islington in London and by 1841 he was in partnership with his nephew, Henry Hyde. Hyde later ran the business in his own name, perhaps when Whittock died in 1860.

For all his high-minded works for the great and good of Oxford University, Whittock was not averse to producing what were essentially souvenir pieces for students and tourists. For example, his Microcosm of Oxford was repackaged as A Present from Oxford. In a similar vein, he also engraved and published The Costumes of the Members of the University of Oxford (c.1843). 

Of more interest to HTBS Types, in the 1840s Whittock and Hyde produced The Flags and Uniforms of the Isis Societies in the University of Oxford, a delightful publication from the early days of organised rowing at the university. Another concertina format booklet, it showed the “jerseys,” hats, neckerchiefs and flags of eighteen college boat clubs or “Isis Societies” (the Isis is the name of the River Thames at Oxford). It is undated but the “newest” club depicted, New College, dates from 1840 and Whittock and Hyde were at 34 Richard Street, Islington for the 1841 census.  

Nathaniel Whittock died in 1860 and sometime just before or after this, his former partner, Henry Hyde, produced The Flags and Aquatic Costumes of the Boating Societies in the University of Cambridge. Below are the best images that I can find, but I hope to secure better ones in the near future (though it is a rarer work than its Oxford counterpart).

The c.1840 Oxford pictures, unlike the Cambridge ones produced twenty years later, did not show any “boating jackets” (aka blazers), just the club “jerseys.” Perhaps this was just the style of the publication but possibly such garments specific to certain clubs did not exist in the 1840s. Jack Carlson’s Rowing Blazers (2014) gives the earliest reference to such jackets, that in the Cambridge University General Almanack and Register for 1852. 

The c.1860 Cambridge set features seventeen clubs. The club boating jacket is shown in ten, the club jersey in five and both garments are shown in two, “St Johns” and “St Catherine’s Hall.” Strictly, the boat club of St John’s College is called Lady Margaret and what was properly called “Katherine Hall” became St Catherine’s College in 1860.